Such is Life
Such is Life is a collection of very different short stories that will have readers longing for more – if they survive….
Ordinary people can do remarkable things when their worlds get turned upside down. Acclaimed writer Steve Kealy’s first “bunch of shorts” is a break-neck ride aboard his wild imagination – and all the tales have a real sting in the err, tail!
From a single-voice courtroom drama which is both funny and painful, to an eye-widening trip around the world on a nuclear submarine; from a suburban house with a secret and a chilling yarn about an everyday hero, to a sad story of love and desperation and even a look at what it’s like to be undead, one thing is common: not everyone gets out alive!
Inside Such is Life you'll find:
Dive!
A 38,000 word novella about a millionaire exacting revenge. But almost nothing is what it seems as intrigue and manipulation are laid bare.
What’s in the box?
An international story of desperation and hope, when an Englishman opens a box from Africa.
Long unwinding road
It’s hot boring work, but when two desert cops meet a biker by accident there’s a surprise conclusion.
One of yours?
A mystery man protects society's invisible people – but is he the Hero of the Homeless or a Vagrant Vigilante? The story builds to a scary crescendo of murder, retribution, subterfuge and unswerving dedication to duty.
May it Please the Court
A court-room monologue where there are questions but not answers, answers but not questions; it’s a little bit silly, but in a good way.
No place like Home
An ordinary family in an ordinary house have some extraordinary unfinished business.
Once there was…
A poem about one percenter bikers, loss, and a late-in-life revival of soul, rekindling of spirit and rebirth of passion.
Screaming Silence
A story about being Persistently Vegetative from the inside – able to hear but not speak or move. It's enough to drive you mad.
Among Tall Men
An ordinary evening with an ordinary problem becomes an extraordinary ordeal for a visitor to the mythical realm of Stonehenge.
A forward foreword
“Such is life” are reputed to be the final words of highwayman and Australia’s most famous folk hero, highwayman Ned Kelly, before he was hanged in 1880 - on November 11, a day more recently dedicated to peace. Those words might be uttered by many of the people in this book too. Ned’s life was the subject of the world’s very first feature film in 1906.
Despite only basic schooling, he dictated a lengthy letter in which he described local law enforcement as "a parcel of big, ugly, fat-necked, wombat-headed, big-bellied, magpie-legged, narrow-hipped, splay-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords". As insults go, that ranks at the very top!
This anthology of one poem, seven short stories and a novella began as something to do when insomnia called and everyone else was asleep; it took a motorcycle ride around the world to find the resolve to finish it.
Aspirant writers are advised to “write about what they know” and in most cases I started out that way – and then things just happened and all the stories grew legs, arms and a few other surplus parts besides, and ran away by themselves. Often I’d write until exhausted and read my own work for the first time days later. Some are more or less as written, others have been polished so often the paint’s worn off.
Gallery
Living life, one toy at a time!
Here are a couple of examples of what I do: one is fact - and the other is fiction. A clue: as a small boy, I lived in Yemen…
All’s fair in Aden-town
In mid-1967, Aden was given back to the Arabs by Britain. It was an important oil-bunkering port for NATO warships, being at the point that the Red Sea (and therefore the Suez canal) joins the Indian ocean. You could see why Russia would want a communist-backed government right there.
Giving in to armed Arab insurrection and nationalists was just another part of the collapse of the British Empire that started with the Boer War.
The Yemeni liberation forces were the NLF – National Liberation Front, and the amusingly-named FLOSY – Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen.
British troops had been stationed there for years, and the place really was at war when my dad decided it would be a cool place to live, so he shipped in his girl-friend, married her there in October 1965 (making her my step-mum) and moved me over from boarding school towards the end of the year.
There were often “troubles’ and I suppose it was a lot like northern Ireland – the Brits just weren’t wanted by the locals. A lot of cruise ships would stop in the port and tourists would be lured into alleys and murdered, or grenades were rolled into markets.
The Arabs were fighting a guerrilla war, mostly from the original town, which was built inside an extinct volcanic crater and called, imaginatively, Crater; we lived in a low-rise block of flats on a dual carriageway of apartment blocks (Ma’alla) on the outside of the crater and several times a month, machine-gun fire would be directed from the mountains into the suburbs below – or rockets would be fired at army patrols. They usually missed.
The army had sandbag emplacements with machine guns on the taller buildings (not ours) and would periodically return fire. One evening a probably-pissed ex-pat got so annoyed by the sporadic bursts of gunfire from the mountains that he went up onto the roof of his low-rise and emptied his revolver in the general direction of the mountains; hearing close-quarter small-arms firm, the gun-emplacements on the taller building on either side of his, raked his rooftop with machine-gun fire; he dived down the stairs, but the gunners destroyed the air-con system for the whole building, which didn’t leave the other residents very pleased!
During these attacks, we would routinely just turn off all the lights in the apartment and carry on with whatever we were doing, but below window height. The shooting usually started after evening prayers at the mosque, so my step-mum was often making dinner; I can recall sitting on the floor under the sink in darkness, peeling carrots for my pet rabbits.
The rockets were a bit more of an issue: a friend of my dad’s (Geoff Clear – funny what you remember!) had a wall-mounted air conditioner that was faulty, so it was removed, leaving a big hole in the wall – not too much of a security issue, since the flat was on about the fifth floor. One night a rocket was fired at the building – and entered the hole; it landed on a loose rug and careened down the tiled passage, deflected off a half-open door and was arrested by a pile of laundry. Geoff woke up in the morning to find a live, primed and unexploded Russian RPG on his bedroom floor… I’m sure he said “Gosh!”, or words to that effect!
There were also occasionally “strikes” – street riots, but most people knew in advance of a “strike” and we just stayed indoors. It was like a curfew and the place was under martial law anyway, I think. During this time I became an avid reader, of anything – including the entire Pears Cyclopaedia. It’s to that which I attribute my trivia knowledge of the world up to and including the early 1960s…
I also produced my first newspaper – six pages on sheets of A1 paper, all written in red pen, complete with drawings in place of photos…
Occasionally we’d be escorted to or from school by troops – and in April 1967, there was a deluge which left the streets flooded, so the army laid on 3-tonne trucks to act as school buses and collected all the kids.
When the order from British PM, Comrade Harold Wilson came to withdraw, it was with indecent haste: about a week, I think: Army, Navy and Air-force, and about 10,000 military personal, plus about 5000 civvy ex-pats. My mum and I were on the last civilian flight out, an Alitalia flight that got us as far as Rome. We had our family dog in the hold, and he managed to chew out of his crate and wouldn’t let baggage handlers “steal” any of “his” suitcases from the hold and in Naples, he escaped again, jumped out of the plane and was running along the runway peeing on every landing light … this caused the entire International airport to be temporarily closed, while my mother had to go and recapture him with about a dozen carabinieri.
In those days you had to disembark during refuelling of the aircraft and although it was high summer, no-one wondered why mum and I had overcoats. It was because we had about 200 rounds of small-bore ammunition in each of our coat pockets. The lining on one of my pockets split and there were dozens of bullets skittering around on the marble floor of the airport concourse. Mum dropped her coat on top of them and I shuffled about on my hands and knees collecting them up again.
No-one said a word or raised an eyebrow. Things are a bit different now!
Also, when asked by an airport immigration official what was in her voluminous handbag, my mother just said ominously, “Women’s things.” Of course, he retreated. Any guy would. In fact, she had two .22 calibre automatic pistols in there… She didn’t tell a lie.
My dad couldn’t fly with us because he had learned his name was on an Arab hit-list because his company had done work for the British military, so he chartered a small plane to fly him out and they illegally dune-hopped across various international boundaries; it took him about a week to get back to London, where his elderly mum was extremely sick. He got see her about 12 hours before she died.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCKING…
Thomas knocked at the door and was surprised when it opened.
“Hello?” he called out, as he stepped inside.
“Well, hello to you too!”, replied a cheery voice.
“Is anybody here?”
“Yes, be with you in a sec.”
The interchange felt a bit like stepping into a country post–office, only to find it empty because the post–mistress was up a ladder in the store room out the back.
The room wasn’t like a Post Office though – more like midway between a domestic living room and a doctor’s waiting room with a bit of Airline Business Lounge tossed in.
He looked around the room – neither big, nor small; nondescript colour. Neutral.
As he turned back he realised there was a small woman standing in a corner. She wasn’t there a moment ago. She did indeed look for all the world like a village post-mistress.
“Ah,” he jumped a little.
She smiled. “How can I help you?”
“Um, I don’t know,” he replied, uncertainly. “I’m not really sure why I’m here. Or even where I am.”
The door opened behind him and a silver–haired lady, sprightly but slight, her smile unbridled, stepped in.
“Oh,” she said. “So sorry to interrupt. Are you…?”
The tall bearded man beside Thomas, where the post-mistress had been a moment before, shook his head and smiled. “No, Mrs Smith, but if you go on through, he’s waiting for you.”
Mrs Smith smiled even wider, nodded a happy wordless greeting to Thomas, stepped past him and walked through a door he hadn’t noticed before.
“Wait, how did…” he started, turning back to the greying curly–haired woman who first greeted him. He flinched. She was perhaps in her early fifties, light spectacles on a chain around her neck, wearing dark slacks and a blouse that might have been a uniform top but didn’t look like it. There was a small name–badge above her left breast, but without his glasses and not wanting to be that guy, the one who stares at women’s breasts, he couldn’t quite read it.
The door opened again and a small, slightly bent old man with a long wispy white beard and a broad–brimmed black hat came in. He wore a similarly black suit that, while it looked like it fitted him once, was now loose on his gaunt frame. He didn’t speak but the suddenly swarthy woman beside Thomas said, “Just through there Abraham,” with a gesture. Her dress reached the floor and a headscarf covered almost all her dense black hair.
Bobbing gently from the waist, the old man smiled wordlessly, nodded to Thomas and stepped through the other door.
“Now, where were we?” asked the grey–haired lady with the name badge. The lady Thomas thought of as a post-mistress, but who was clearly lots of other people too.
“I have no idea; I don’t know where I am, why I’m here or what’s going on,” started Thomas.
The door behind him opened again and a very much younger man wearing a white robe over white cotton pants and a white skull–cap entered. He was clean-shaven but had some small cuts to his face, as if he had recently shaved off his first beard. He scowled under his eyebrows but said nothing. The short woman beside Thomas, clad head–to–toe in a black burkha with only her dark eyes visible, abruptly pointed one of her gloved hands without speaking. His eyes downcast, the man moved briskly to the other door and stepped through. He left it open, but it swung closed after a second, shutting with an audible click.
Before Thomas could open his mouth, the first door opened again and three girls, all under about ten, piled noisily through it; one was giggling, two were skipping.
There was suddenly an old man beside Thomas, wispy-haired, in a brown dressing gown and slippers just called out, “Hello girls – just straight through that door and they’ll be there to meet you.”
“Thank–you!” they all trilled politely, as they left via the second door, slamming it behind them. It reopened a crack and one face peeked through the gap and said “Sorry!” before closing it gently.
“Lovely manners, but enough now,” the lady with the name–badge said softly, as if to herself. She made a small gesture at the entrance door. Thomas turned to look at it and it wasn’t there. Nor was the exit door and Thomas realised he couldn’t now remember what they looked like, whether they opened inwards or outwards and even precisely where they had been on the now–blank walls.
Seeing the look of confusion on his face, the lady with the name badge invited Thomas to sit. “You’ve got a few questions, I expect?”
“Too right I have – starting with all that,” Thomas shrugged at both the recent past and the area behind him, where the doors were, but weren’t now.
“Well, where shall we start…?” posed the lady, still the one with the name badge.
Thomas gestured again, to her. “How about with you?”
She chuckled. “Oh, that’s very gallant Thomas. I’d expect nothing less of you. Ever the lady’s man.”
“Wait, how do you know my name? Who ARE you?”
“Oh, who I am is of no importance, but we know everyone here.”
“Okay – so let’s start with that instead,” said Thomas. “Where exactly is ‘here’?”
“This is what you’d call a Distribution Centre, or perhaps a Clearing Centre. It’s where people decide where they’re going next.”
“Going next?”
“Yes – where their next destination will be; it depends upon what they really want to do. They make their own minds up – we don’t decide for them; we’re merely facilitators.”
“Whoa, back up a bit. Where are we exactly?”
“What do you remember, Thomas?”
“Everything – why?”
“No, I mean your most recent memory – what is that?”
“Well I went to work this morning, and…”
“Did you Thomas?”
He ignored her, “I got in my car as usual, and headed to…”
“Not the office Thomas. Where did you go?” There was a bit of steel in her voice now.
He started to shuffle a bit. “Okay, I made a small detour…”
“Yes Thomas. To Jane’s house, where you made a phone call.”
“Yes, I called the office.” Thomas was looking a little flustered.
“And told them you weren’t coming to work because you were ill. But you weren’t ill, were you Thomas?” The woman’s voice had lost its warm Customer–Service tone and was now brutally matter–of–fact.
Thomas was very uncomfortable. “Yes. No, well, I wasn’t feeling great…”
“And what is the last thing you remember Thomas?” Her voice had an edge like a rapier to it.
Thomas had tears in his eyes now. “I was at Jane’s house and I … I don’t know. I had a bit of a turn.”
“You were in bed, Thomas. With Jane. You had a heart attack. While being unfaithful to your wife, the mother of your three children.” Her voice stung like a lash.
“Oh.” Thomas looked up at the woman now. Despite her severe voice, her face was serene. “Am I in a hospital?”
“No Thomas. I’m afraid it was a fatal heart attack.” He seemed not to have heard. Or not understood.
“Oh,” again: “Where are we?”
“As I said, this is what you would call a Distribution Centre.”
“So, I’m… sort of dead?” Thomas seemed to be a few steps behind, but catching up. He held up his hands and inspected them.
“Well, your body died, yes.” The lady’s tone had softened again.
As if he wasn’t ready to process that just yet, Thomas skipped a track: “Those other people. You weren’t yourself.” It was a statement that needed an answer, the way a question does.
“They saw what they expected to see and met who they expected to meet,” said the lady. Thomas now saw her badge said ‘Peta’. He looked at her blankly.
“Mrs Smith is a lovely lady who played the organ in church; she was hoping to see her saviour, but I am not he; she will see him soon enough. Abraham is a rabbi; he served his community with distinction for many years and lived a pious life, married a good woman and raised eleven fine sons; he expected to meet a devout Jewish woman and that’s who was here to greet him. He will meet his Messiah soon. The children were together and hoped to see their beloved Grandpa again – so they did. Their parents came through just before you and are waiting for them.”
“Oh – the whole family? That’s a pity,” said Thomas. “And what about the other chap?” He still wasn’t really processing his own circumstances.
“Ishmael believed that suicide with a bomb would get him to paradise; he expects to find devout people like himself there. But I think he might not find his outcome so appealing. The three girls and their parents were near him when he…” seeing Thomas’s crestfallen face, she didn’t finish the sentence.
“So, what now?” asked Thomas. “You’ve been very kind and I’ve taken lots of your time. But why did I see you?”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, said Peta. “There’s lots of other spaces like this and we can take as long as you need. You saw me because you’re an atheist. You don’t believe in an afterlife, you have no faith, so you get a bureaucrat as a facilitator and a tasteful office as a place of transition.”
“Oh. Transition” He tried the word and found it fitted his reality. “So what did the others see?”
“Mrs Smith saw the doors to the church where she was married, where she worshipped for 58 years and where she buried her husband three months ago; Abraham saw the doors to the Schul where he has held services every Shabbat for over sixty years; the girls saw their grandma’s house and Ishmael walked through the great gates of the Blue Mosque.”
“So, no Pearly Gates then? Like in the stories?”
“Mrs Smith saw the gates she wanted to, just behind you – it’s a question of what each person believes. What do you believe, Thomas?”
“Nothing really – until a few minutes ago, anyway.”
“Of course, we had another Thomas here, a while back – he Doubted too. Why did you mention the Pearly Gates?”
“Well, that’s what we were taught at school; that the entrance to heaven was through Pearly Gates and you’d meet Saint Peter. But I thought it out for myself and decided the whole religion thing was just a way of giving primitive people some rules to live by. And Saint Peter was just part of the story.”
“Do you really think so? Because that’s my name.”
Thomas flinched and read her badge again: Peta.
“Well, I am a bit surprised to be here; I always thought that when life ends, the lights go out and that was the end of it all.”
“is that what you want? Oblivion? Because if it’s what you desire…”
“No, no – I want to see my wife again. Our children.”
“No Thomas. They’re still alive; they’ll mourn you, learn how you died and move on. It’s what humans do.”
“Oh,” said Thomas. “I’d like to tell them I love them.”
“Do you? Did you? How did you show them? I think we both know the answer to that. No, I’m afraid your path is forward, not back. And only you can decide what that path will be.”
“What do I get to choose? Like between heaven or hell?
“There is no heaven and hell, Thomas – there is only progression.”
“What’s next? For those others? For me?”
“That depends upon what you want, what you expect and what you believe. They may see their supreme being and rest a while before moving on. Mrs Smith will see her husband again and they will go ahead with each other. Abraham will mingle with generations of his forefathers; the girls will join their parents and their path will be together for a while longer yet.”
“And Ishmael? The Bomber?”
Peta’s eyes flashed and for a split–second, Thomas saw something different: not the benign middle–aged lady with spectacles on a chain, or any of the other shapes she had been; it had horns. And teeth.
“There is a place for people like him. It is not pleasant. But it is permanent. You don’t get a second chance when you kill innocents in the name of faith. Any faith.” Peta’s voice was sharp and hard, like razor–edged diamond.
“So there’s a second chance?” Thomas asked, brightening up at the prospect.
“Yes, there may be – but as I said, you don’t go back to what and who you knew before. It is all ahead. The past is past.”
“Oh. Well, if that’s the way it works then… I expect I disappointed a few people.”
“Yes, you did,” Peta was once again warm and friendly, “if it’s any consolation, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last.”
“I suppose I’d better be moving along then.” Thomas stood up. “Thank you for being so patient with me.”
“Not at all; it has been my pleasure. If you step through that door, you’ll meet someone who will help you make a choice which works for you, which matches your belief.”
Thomas looked over his shoulder: there was a door behind him again, but only the one. He nodded and smiled to Peta, turned and walked through an ordinary office door, taking care to close it gently behind him.
He was in a field, with grass underfoot, and some trees; He looked back, but there was no sign of the office, or of Peta, or whatever she was or became. There were white clouds overhead and rolling hills in the distance; tall yellow flowers grew through the lush green grass in odd patches and there were tiny white daises at his feet. The place was naggingly, hauntingly familiar but he couldn’t remember being anywhere like it.
A man in pale slacks and an open–necked shirt was walking towards him. He was tall and ruggedly handsome, with a thick head of dark hair and a welcoming smile.
“Thomas. I’m especially glad to meet you.” He stuck out a hand and gave Thomas a firm but brief handshake. His tone was warm, like his hand, and authoritative.
“I’m sorry – I didn’t catch your name?” queried Thomas politely.
The tall man – about thirty–five, Thomas guessed, but with flecks of grey at the temples – laughed. “I didn’t give it. You wouldn’t know it or remember it anyway. Let’s just say I run this place.”
“Ah. Perhaps you could tell me what and where this place is, then? I have a feeling I’ve been here before, but I can’t place it,” said Thomas, as if the ‘where’ was more important than the ‘why’ which he’d already explored with Peta.
The bigger man laughed again, not so warmly this time: “You saw this place every time you went to work; you might recognise it as the screen–saver picture on your computer. The computer you used to arrange your dalliances with women other than your wife.”
“Ah, yes. That. Well, I’m truly sorry about all that now.” His tone was contrite.
“I’m sure you are – but it makes no difference; Jane is traumatised, your wife is devastated, your children are inconsolable, and you are dead. When they find out how and where you died, your children will despise your memory. And your employers will know you for a liar and a cheat, so they won’t hold a wake in your memory or contribute to your funeral,” said the tall man in the open–necked shirt.
As he spoke, his voice was almost threatening. “Only six people will attend your burial; one will be the celebrant, and one will be a homeless drunk who stumbled to the wrong gathering but is too polite to leave before the end. His decency exceeds yours and is already noted.”
Thomas was aghast. “Only six people care I died?”
“Yes – and four will be your family, who will not remember you fondly.”
“Peta told me there is no going back, but she didn’t tell me much about this place. What is it?”
“Mmmm. Thomas, that’s a tough question. I don’t think I can really answer it. Not for you, anyway.” The man’s voice had a curious rumble to it, like distant thunder.
“Well, what would say, Mrs Smith, call it? She came through the office a few minutes before I did.”
“Oh, Maisie Smith! Did you know her? What a lovely lady – and such a wonderful husband too; quite devoted to her – there was no doubt they’d wait for each other. So nice to see reunions like that! No, of course you wouldn’t have known her, would you? Not at all your type of person. You know she lived just three doors down from Jane? But you wouldn’t know anything about church–going ladies, ladies who kept their marriage vows, would you?” There was more thunder in the big man’s voice. Things were not facing the way Thomas liked.
“Maisie Smith would have called this place ‘Heaven’. It is what she dreamed it would be – a fine English garden, with a riot of scents and colours, which her husband has tended every day since he arrived here and while he waited for her.” Thomas looked around and couldn’t see anything close to an English garden.
Thomas finally made the obvious leap. “Would Mrs Smith have called you God?”
“Indeed she did. For her comfort I was a little older and there were robes. It was what she expected.”
“And Abraham?” asked Thomas.
“Abraham is a devout, honest, humble man who served his fellows and his faith with diligence; he is at rest with his family. He too, saw and received what he expected to see and hoped to receive.”
“What about the girls? They are too young to be here”, countered Thomas, still resisting the irrefutable truth.
“Indeed they are, but I do not control free will,” rumbled the Almighty. “If evil is done, there are … consequences.”
“And Ishmael?” asked Thomas.
“His future is not here. It is… elsewhere. It is not pleasant. He will not progress.”
“Did he see God?”
“If you mean, did he see Allah, or Mohammed, no, he did not; he sinned in my name. He will have no joy in the afterlife he chose.”
“What are my choices?” asked Thomas.
“You too, have none. You denied all offers of guidance forevermore; you chose to ignore the many opportunities to follow a spiritual path to redemption. What you see is your only option. Your future is tedium.”
“Oh my. I think I’ve made a rather big mistake.” Thomas slid to his knees on the fresh green grass. He noticed it didn’t smell like a lawn should. If anything, it smelled faintly plasticky.
“Yes, I think you could say that,” said God. “You’ve spent most of your life denying my existence; actively arguing against it, in fact. Yet here we are. Here you are. I never heard you decrying the existence of Lucifer. Not once.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?” asked Thomas in a small–boy voice. “All I wanted was proof that you really existed. Just a simple sign to put me right.”
“Proof?” boomed God, now immensely tall, with silver hair below his shoulders. “You want proof? You want a SIGN?
“Every morning and every evening. I painted a fresh picture in the sky across all the world. Every one different, every one a masterpiece. I gave you rainbows and nature’s splendour every single day – and still you want a SIGN?” The voice ended as a peal of thunder from the sky. As it faded away, there was just a faint melody echoing on the wind: “Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door…”
And he was alone. Utterly alone.
About the author: Steve Kealy
Being born in Libya is a bit of a conversation-stopper. So is living in Yemen. Two words: Army brat. So far, he’s lived in ten countries on four continents, but now Melbourne in Australia is home.
There, Steve is a freelance writer, TV producer and voice-over narrator. He's also a volunteer fire-fighter and recipient of Australia’s National Emergency Medal.
He’s had more jobs than he can remember, in places like mines, nuclear power stations, banks, the military, newspapers and magazines, on radio – and TV, where he was wisely, only allowed to appear as a voice. A multi award-winning journalist, he holds an MBA degree from Exeter University, but not all the time.
Steve has competed in about 20 types of motorsport on two and four wheels and has had one international race win, many crashes and three broken necks; in the absence of any obvious talent, he has retired from racing, at least for now. For years his competition licence featured a picture of Desmo the family dog and annoyingly, no-one noticed, perhaps proving that pets do look like their humans after all.
He volunteers as a driving instructor to help Learners build up hours behind the wheel before sitting their tests; if nothing else, his students know understeer from oversteer and can heel-and-toe.
And he rides motorcycles. A lot. Since he lived in Aden when he was nine years old. In 2017, he and life-partner Liz rode their Adventure bikes 40,000km (the distance around the world) through 16 countries, on four continents. That trip will be told in One Dream Two Ride, and includes some epic crashes and much laughter.
Defying Apartheid laws and death threats, he and Liz started the world’s largest multi-decade motorcycle charity event, The Toy Run. By its 35th anniversary, over three million people had benefited, but like Spike Milligan, he expects a knighthood is unlikely.
He scuba-dives when it’s warm, skis when it’s not and in between, flies an aircraft about the size of a shopping trolley.
Despite being published daily for years, this collection of short stories is his first book, but there are many more fermenting away. Keep an eye (or an ear) out for the audio-book of ‘Such is Life’ narrated by the author and pictorial and text versions of 'One Dream, Two Ride', due out in 2019.